Phil Bolger Boat Renderings

I am interested in practicing my small boat modelling and rendering skills not as a designer but as a draftsperson. Recently I have posted two examples of Phil Bolger's designs on the member gallery taken from sketches found openly on the internet. I like them as they are simple basic shapes especially the hull form.

I am looking for more Bolger designs or similar to practice my craft. I know that you can readily purchase plans and would gladly do so if I were actually building the boat. Some sites provide you with some basic outlines in order to provide their prospective customers with an initial idea of what they might look like but there is not quite enough detail to do an accurate model. Some other sites offer free plans but mostly of boats designs of the mid 20th century. I am looking for more late 20th and early 21st century examples.

I would also consider modelling any plan available as long as it is not too complex at least for now. Think it of as a labour of love having drawn my first plywood boat sketch as a ten year old boy on the lakes of Haliburton County so long ago.

 

Public domain plans are everywhere and typically what you see. Getting newer plans will usually require you purchase them, simply to protect the copyright. You can't ask a designer to offer up their latest ideas for free, frankly. As far as styling, well as a modeler, you can change this with little difficulty.

 

Most boat plans are sold with very basic license agreements. Basicly along the lines "you are allowed to build one...". Imo this includes the creation of additional documentation and visualisation using the plans.
So maybe its worth to ask around if any plan license holder is willing to commission you to create a 3D Model. Using the resulting Model for portfolio purposes should fall under fair use.

 

You can find drawings and a few sets of offsets in Bolgers book: Boats With An Open Mind. There are also a number of plan sets for Bolger boats in one of Harold (Dynamite) Payson's books.

Both Bolger and his builder friend Payson were very open with their design and building work. In many cases one could build the boat from the information in the books. I urge anyone who is tempted to do that to give some thought to the minor larceny that results from copying without paying for the real plan set. The Bolger designs were and are cheap and well worth their price.

There may not be any harm in drawing the boats from the details in the books, maybe OK to build a model without buying the plans. But not a full sized boat.

May Phil and Dynamite both rest in peace.

 

Allow me to make a small response. Earlier this year I did a rendering of a small Triloboat designed by Dave Zeiger. Before starting the model I asked for his permission to do so and obtained it with the stipulation that it was for personal use only. Dave was impressed with the result and he might one day use it on his website when he gets around to it.

It was Dave who turned me onto Phil Bolger's designs and my impressions of his fine work are shown on this site. I like to believe I honor him somehow and there is no intent on my part to financially benefit from my personal interpretations of his work.

For a living I am an architectural project coordinator and my work has involved drafting, both hand and digital these past forty years. I indirectly work for designers and architects in the development of their projects but am not involved in the design of the project. At best I am a design draftsperson.

Perhaps I am being naïve or a wishful thinker in believing that perhaps one day some designers would be interested in my service of providing them 3D renderings of their work. I see some boat design websites which provide some very nice 2D layouts of their work. Maybe the addition of some 3D models would be of benefit to them. At this time I would love to exchange my current modelling skill for an opportunity to draw a real design. Do not necessarily need all of the construction details just enough to produce the general outline as I have with Bolger's boats. Perhaps as boat designers yourselves you can tell me if I am paddling up the wrong creek?

If my interest offends anyone in anyway I will gladly terminate this avenue of research.

 

No criticism intended TimTab. I did not mean to infer that you might be less than fair.

Do continue to paddle up this creek. We have lots of good people here who welcome new members.

 

Much appreciated gentlemen.

 

Phil Bolger authored five books containing his boat designs. Most of the designs include the plans including offset information reduced in scale to book page size.

Small Boats 1973
The Folding Schooner, and Other Adventures in Boat Design 1976
Different Boats 1980
Thirty Odd Boats 1982
Boats with an Open Mind 1994
Also: Bolger's Boats combining Small Boats and The Folding Schooner and other Adventures in Boat Design 1983

Susanne Altenberger, Bolger's widow, is continuing the design business, Phil Boger and Friends.

 

Thank you sir. I will look into those. The last one sounds particularly interesting.

Tim

 

I don't know how many of the Bolger books are available new. One place to look for out of print books is bookfinder.com which searches a number of online sellers.

 

Bruce Hallman has created a web page with sketches and isometric drawings of seemingly hundreds of Bolger's designs

http://hallman.org/bolger/isometrics.html

 

I have seen this site before but have been unable to make a connection to their Yahoo site until today. Do not have much experience with navigating Yahoo sites but did obtain an email address which I will use to gain more information hopefully as well as ask for permission to continue posting my interpretations of Mr. Bolger's work going forward. Thanks for that.

 

Two other sources you might want to look at -

Ruel Parker's The Sharpie book

Peter H Spectre's 100 boat designs reviewed

The later concerns wooden boats, but has the advantage of being about boats that have mostly been designed and built by professionals.